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Immediately after President Bush indicated his support for the Federal Marriage Amendment in February 2004, I decided not to make a planned contribution to his campaign and decided as well not to give to the Republcan National Committee or any other GOP outfit. But, as the year progressed and the Democratic (and media) attacks became ever more shrill, especially with the release (and box office success) of Michael Moore‘s festival of deceits in June, I changed my mind and ended up giving money to my party and to various candidates. I thought my side needed resources to defend itself against mean-spirited and dishonest attacks.

My finances being tighter this year, I thought I couldn’t afford to contribute to Governor Schwarzenegger’s “California Recovery Team,” an effort to raise money to support four reform initiatives on this fall’s state ballot. But, it seemed that whenever I worked out at my gym and looked up at the TVs, I saw another commercial from some left-wing interest group attacking not only those proposed reforms but the Governor himself. The commercials were dishonest as well as mean. I wanted to support my governor’s efforts to clean up Sacramento.

When Log Cabin e-mailed me an invite to a fundraiser with that good man (which I will be heading right after I post this), I looked through my finances and found the means to make a donation. I may have to cut back in a few areas, but that seems entirely fitting since one of the propositions on the ballot, Prop. 76, would place a limit on state spending.

His political opponents decry the governor as a movie star who isn’t very bright, using similar terms to those Democrats and their media allies used to attack Ronald Reagan a generation ago, another California governor with an ambitious reform agenda. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s record shows both a man with command of the issues (and problems) facing the Golden State and a real commitment to reform. While George Will, a keen observer of politics observed that our Governor does not completely understand his own political problems, “he does understand a large part of the state’s.”(more…)

In the wake of Tom DeLay’s indictment on one count of criminal conspiracy, Democrats are crowing. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi sees a “culture of corruption” in the GOP while even some conservatives fear that the current Republican Congress resembles the Democratic Congress of 1993-94, the last one where Ms. Pelosi’s party had a majority in the House.

Some Democrats (and even a few Republicans) believe that they can use the corruption charge against the GOP and so regain the majority they had enjoyed for all but four of the sixty-two years prior to 1994. That year, Republicans ran against the Democrats’ liberal and spendthrift policies, their corruption and abuse of power and put forward a positive reform agenda, The Contract with America. They won a majority in the House (and the Senate) and have had uninterrupted control (of the House) ever since.

While I’m no fan of Tom DeLay, I believe the charges that Travis County (TX) District Attorney Ronnie Earle leveled against him are baseless, a political vendetta by a prosecutor who routinely indicts his political adversaries. Earle’s political indictments rarely result in conviction. But, the focus on DeLay should remind us how far House Republicans, under his leadership, have strayed from the conservative reform agenda which brought them to power just over a decade ago. Ankle Biting Pundits observes:

Clearly the Congressional GOP has lost much of its bearings, and is turning into the 1992-1993 version of the Congressional Democrats. And the question arises, what’s the point of having a majority if that majority doesn’t stand for anything useful? If the result is more of the same spending binges, nonchalance on the issue of illegal immigration, an expansion of the welfare state (i.e. Medicare Modernization Act), and the lack of backbone when it comes to cutting taxes permanently and reforming Social Security, then what have we really won?

According to Pajamas Media (of which this blog is a member), one of my favorite talk show hosts, the author of two smart books (The Death of Right and Wrong & The New Thought Police) and a third on the way, Tammy Bruce, a lesbian and former president of the National Organization for Women’s L.A. chapter, officially launched her blog today. While she remains a pro-choice liberal, she frequently finds herself at odds with the left today because of what she calls its “malignant narcissism.”

I enjoy listening to Tammy’s show Saturday afternoons on Talk Radio 790 KABC and welcome her voice to the growing chorus of gay & lesbian bloggers challenging the left-wing orthodoxy which all too often defines our community.

I’ll be keeping an eye on her blog and encourage all GayPatriot readers to do the same.

When federal officials in New York yesterday announced the arrest of 22 members of an international drug cartel, they revealed that cocaine shipments seized by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were labeled with a sweet portrait of the colorful cartoon quartet.

It is the government’s job to warn and inform. That’s what we have the National Weather Service for. It is not government’s job to command and control and make microdecisions about the lives of people who want to do it their own way.

Perhaps the tide is beginning to shift in favor of pro-American views in our country, as Dan suggests below happened in Hollywood in 1985. Pataki’s decision to scrap the “International Freedom Center” may be the first sign that Americans are fed up with the political correctness of the War on Terror and the symbols associated with it.

FOR RELEASE: IMMEDIATE, Wednesday September 28, 2005
STATEMENT FROM GOVERNOR GEORGE E. PATAKI

I strongly believe in this nation’s core principle of freedom and I personally believe that the celebration of freedom is not inconsistent with the goals of memorializing our nearly 3,000 lost heroes. The creation of an institution that would show the world our unity and our resolve to preserve freedom in the wake of the horrific attacks is a noble pursuit.

But freedom should unify us. This Center has not.

Since June, we have offered the International Freedom Center (IFC) the time they needed to clarify their intentions and work with stakeholders to reach a consensus. Today there remains too much opposition, too much controversy over the programming of the IFC and we must move forward with our first priority, the creation of an inspiring memorial to pay tribute to our lost loved ones and tell their stories to the world.

Therefore, the IFC cannot be located on the Memorial quadrant. I have asked the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC) to work with the IFC to explore other locations for the Center. In addition, I am directing the LMDC to continue its efforts to identify programming for the Memorial quadrant that will tell the story of September 11th.

I would also ask all parties to now join together and unite behind fulfilling our solemn obligation to the families of those we lost. We must reclaim the spirit that we saw the days and weeks after September 11th, a spirit of unity, resolution and purpose and we must come together to build a lasting memorial for the generations to come.

This grassroots American effort to keep the integrity of Ground Zero is proof to the power of the blogosphere and its impact. Robert, thanks for your help. You were there for me when I needed your support…. and now you have done a great service to the memory of those who perished on September 11. This nation should be truly grateful for your tireless work over the past several months.

Looking at the Hollywood box office slump of 2005, my friend Craig Titley (quite possibly the funniest screenwriter in Hollywood who is also intelligent) finds similarities to the slump twenty years ago, back in 1985 when Back to the Future topped the box office charts.

The questions Hollywood needs to be asking is not what caused the slump, but what will end it? What brought audiences back to the movies in ‘85? And what is it audiences now want that Hollywood 2005 isn’t delivering? The movies tell the tale.

By offering a detailed analysis of the successful movies (of 1985), Craig finds that they were largely pro-American flics:

these films were optimistic in a time of fear, and they didn’t endlessly bag on their own country or send a negative message to the world implying that America is full of corrupt, greedy, selfish, dishonest, Capitalist pigs and that the Russians have every right to hate us and nuke us. On the contrary, these films wore the flag proudly, celebrated American valor and the American spirit, and used the real world villains as the reel world villains.

There’s more great stuff like that in Craig’s piece so rather than having me give it you second-hand, just read the whole thing. Not only is it wise, but it’s witty as well, a real delight to read–and you’ll learn something along the way. And you’ll be reminded of what this town can accomplish when moviemakers promote what is best in this nation — and in all of us.

As Doc Brown said in the Back to the Future movies when told Ronald Reagan was President in the future…. “Ha! What next, Jack Benny for Secretary of the Treasury?” With Geena Davis as President, do we get Susan Sarandon as Secretary of State?

Against my better judgment, I also watched the show knowing full well that one of the writers/consultants is none other than Satan’s sister, Eleanor “Screech” Clift. Since I’m lazy, I’m glad Chad captured many of the thoughts I would have written this morning.

The issue here isn’t really the fact that a chick is running the show, it’s how she got the job. A Republican candidate with a 40% approval rating chooses an “independent” female as a running mate to up his poll numbers. Not based on merit. Not based on experience. She’s got a pair of fun-pillows and a hoo-ha. He then makes the mistake of having a brain aneurysm and dies.

Okay, I doubt I would have used the word “hoo-ha.”

Anyway, I really *wanted* to like the show. Otherwise I wouldn’t have wasted an hour of my time last night. Or I would have watched “House” on FOX, a much better drama.

‘Commander’ just stretched the realm of believeability from start to finish. Not that a woman would be President. I actually believe it will happen in the next two or three election cycles, in fact. But every other part of the show was just eye-rollingly ridiculous. An ‘independent’ former Member of Congress-then Chancellor of a university has a right-wing…. teenage daughter? The nasty (but great character) right-wing Speaker of the House winkingly shuts down Geena’s TelePrompter during her first speech to Congress? Come on.

“The West Wing” is also not exactly a bastion of conservative values on television. But it has been at times very well written, and most importantly, believeable.

I hate to make predictions because I’m pretty bad at it. But I don’t think Geena will be in the Oval Office for long.

There seems to be some serendipity in the upcoming release of former CBS News Producer Mary Mapes’ book and media acknowledgment of its own biased coverage of Hurricane Katrina. Indeed, in the past two days, at least two leading conservative bloggers (Hugh Hewitt and Powerline) have commented on both topics. Just as the MSM tailored its reporting of the hurricane to fit the story it wanted to tell–that the slow recovery was all Bush’s fault–so did Ms. Mapes tailor her reporting of the president’s National Guard service to fit the conclusion she had reached long before she obtained memos which supposedly confirmed her theory.

Mary Mapes, as you many recall, had been pursuing the story of the president’s National Guard service for five years. Like many on the left, she believed the president’s father pulled strings to get his son a National Guard post so he wouldn’t have to serve in Vietnam and that once there, the future president shirked his duty. But, she could come up with no hard evidence to prove her case until a man she called an “unimpeachable source” came up with documents which confirmed that theory.

Alas (for her), bloggers quickly determined the memos to be forgeries, largely based on the typeface (CBS claimed the memos were from the early 1970s, yet they used proportional spacing typical of computer word-processing programs). The bloggers’ case was strengthened when CBS revealed that the “unimpeachable source” was Bill Burkett, a man with a long history of hating George W. Bush.

Ms. Mapes let her bias, her own belief that Bush had to have shirked his duty, cloud her judgment just as the MSM did in pinning the blame on president Bush for failures in the relief effort in the aftermath of Katrina. Though Dan Rather, Ms. Mapes comrade-in-arms in the Memogate scandal, called the MSM’s coverage of the Hurricane, “one of television news’ finest moments,” in the past couple of days, even the LA Times, an MSM mainstay, has found that coverage to be distorted.(more…)

Probably because she was so upset by the fact even CNN devoted too much time yesterday to Hurricane Rita yesterday, thus all but forgetting her rally, Cindy Sheehan, ignored three warnings from police that she — and her cohorts — were breaking the law by sitting in the pedestrian walkway in front of the White House. Had she listened to police, she could have avoided arrest.

In other words, it was a media stunt. Guess she wanted her sixteenth minute of fame. Or is she now on her eighteenth?

John (PatriotPartner) and I lost a member of our family over the weekend. Romper was our oldest dog at 17 years, and his age was taking the quality of life away from him every day lately. So we had to do what was best for him…. but I miss him.

I didn’t know Romper as a pup, when he earned his name. When John and I met, Romper was about 11 years old and for an English Cocker that was getting up there. He had been blind for the last few years of his life and had serious trouble with arthritis. But he was also one of the happiest dogs with the best disposition (especially for an older dog) that I have ever seen.

Although he spent much of the time sleeping during the past couple of years, something is missing in the house tonight. Saxby, our black lab, will keep me company while John is away for work this week, but I suddenly long to lift Romper up and carry him outside one last time.

Despite his age and struggles, Romper stubbornly held onto life until the very end. He also rarely demonstrated if he was in pain, though we are pretty sure he was at times.

John gave him as much love and caring through the years as he had to give. I know John’s heart is aching and we both wish this day had never come. But we wanted Romper to have some dignity before things got too bad.

Goodbye Romper. Enjoy the boiled chicken in Heaven…. and we’ll think of you when we have pizza! Now go run around and romp on the clouds!!

A reader wrote in to Glenn Reynolds to report the same thing: he did not see 100,000 there either. Jeff Goldstein shows how the MSM has been spinning news of the rally to make it appear larger and more diverse that it actually was.

It seems that every critic of the Iraq war claims that it is another Vietnam, that not only are our troops in the process of losing, but that public opposition is growing. Yet, while polls may show that more Americans oppose the war than did at the time we liberated Iraq from Saddam’s tyranny, the number of those who are fervently opposed to the war does not match that of the Vietnam era.

There were few (if any) large-scale protests when, in August 1964, Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution effectively declaring war on the Communist government in North Vietnam. Yet, hundreds of thousands (maybe even millions) rallied in cities across the country in 2003 to oppose the impending U.S. (and coalition) war against Saddam’s regime. Even the organizers don’t claim more than 100,000 attended yesterday’s rally. And as I noted above, most observers believe that number to be inflated.

As the war in Vietnam escalated so too did the protests back home, that is, the rallies got bigger. But, as our troops continue to fight the terrorists in Iraq, the size of the rallies has not so increased. Those who follow what’s really going in Iraq know that our involvement there is nothing like that in Vietnam. Although we are experiencing a few setbacks, we are winning the war. And the inability of the anti-war movement to draw a large crowd for their rally yesterday shows that the situation back in the U.S. is nothing like it was in the Vietnam era.

In a recent post, I faulted the Catholic Church for an “instruction” which would bar even celibate men from the priesthood. Well, the Catholic Church isn’t the only Christian group excluding someone because of something they can’t control. Dirty Harry reports that a Christian school in Ontario, California is expelling a girl because her parents are lesbians. Anyway, I agree with Dirty Harry’s point that this is “indefensible,” so read his post!

UPDATE–The Anchoress offers a perspective on the Catholic Church’s proposed policy which, I believe, anyone who wants to talk (or blog) about this issue must read. In my initial post, on the Catholic Church’s policy, I updated it to link this post and now she has another where she writes:

My own gut feeling: Rome will not ban gay priests – but the men who DO enter our seminaries-both gay and straight – are going to really, really have to convince that they put their faith and their vows before their inclinations. In other words…they’re going to have to win back the trust of a church and a people grievously harmed. The church will not be able to withstand a second round of scandal or another lavender mafia, moving predator priests from one job to another. And if that means a little bit of difficulty and suffering while we work this all out, I would hope our gay priests would be men enough to deal with it.

BATON ROUGE, LA. – The White House announced today that President Bush has successfully sold the state of Louisiana back to the French at more than double its original selling price of $11,250,000.

“This is a bold step forward for America,” said Bush. “And America will be stronger and better as a result. I stand here today in unity with French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac, who was so kind to accept my offer of Louisiana in exchange for 25 million dollars cash.”

The state, ravaged by Hurricane Katrina, will cost hundreds of billions of dollars to rebuild.

“Jacques understands full well that this one’s a ‘fixer upper,’” said Bush. “He and the French people are quite prepared to pump out all that water, and make Louisiana a decent place to live again. And they’ve got a lot of work to do. But Jacques’s assured me, if it’s not right, they’re going to fix it.”

The move has been met with incredulity from the beleaguered residents of Louisiana.

However, President Bush’s decision has been widely lauded by Republicans.

“This is an unexpected but brilliant move by the President,” said Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. “Instead of spending billions and billions, and billions of dollars rebuilding the state of Louisiana, we’ve just made 25 million dollars in pure profit.”

“This is indeed a smart move,” commented Fox News analyst Brit Hume. “Not only have we stopped the flooding in our own budget, we’ve made money on the deal. Plus, when the god-awful French are done fixing it up, we can easily invade and take it back again.”

The money gained from ‘The Louisiana Refund’ is expected to be immediately pumped into the rebuilding of Iraq.

(GP. Editor’s Note — A friend just emailed this to me…. if anyone knows where it originates…. please let me know. I’d like to give proper attribution!)

In the first place, not even Karl Rove’s worldview is so obsessively Bush-centric as John Kerry’s. There are many interesting issues raised by Katrina, but for Senator Ahab it all goes back to the great white monster, Bush. Bush and his crew should have known the levees were weak. Bush and his crew should have known thousands in New Orleans would be trapped. (Did I miss Kerry’s own warnings on these subjects?) All reality flows back to Bush. All begins with Bush, ends with Bush, is explained by Bush and is polluted by Bush, cursed be thy name.

Wooooo hoooo! Dubya takes the gloves off and says the things I’ve been saying for over a year….. the ferocity of the 9/11 attacks had much more to do with the weakness of the United States’ previous response (under Clinton, Bush 41, Reagan and Carter) than it did about the first 8 months of the Bush 43 term.

Bush finally said what the 9/11 Commission was too politically-whipped to say: Bill Clinton, Sandy Berger, Madeleine Albright, Al Gore and Richard Clarke all bear primary responsibility for 9/11 by their sleeping on the job for eight years while al-Qaeda plotted and repeatedly attacked America.

“The terrorists saw our response to the hostage crisis in Iran, the bombings in the Marine barracks in Lebanon, the first World Trade Center attack, the killing of American soldiers in Somalia, the destruction of two U.S. embassies in Africa and the attack on the USS Cole,” Bush noted, after getting an update on the war on terror at the Pentagon.

“The terrorists concluded that we lacked the courage and character to defend ourselves and so they attacked us,” the president added, in quotes picked up by United Press International.

Four of the six terrorist attacks cited by Bush took place on Clinton’s watch, with the first two coming during the presidencies of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.

The president asserted at a news conference afterward that terrorists had studied the American responses to the Iranian hostage crisis during the Carter administration, the bombing of United States Marines’ barracks in Lebanon during the Reagan administration and the first terror attack on the World Trade Center during the Clinton administration, among other events.

“The terrorists concluded that we lacked the courage and character to defend ourselves, and so they attacked us,” the president said. “The only way the terrorists can win is if we lose our nerve and abandon the mission.”

“For the safety and security of the American people, that’s not going to happen on my watch,” he said.

Same story, different sources, different quotes by the President used. Same message.

There is no more important international issue today than the need to defeat the curse of terrorism. And as the first democratically elected president of Iraq, I have a responsibility to ensure that the world’s youngest democracy survives the inherently difficult transition from totalitarianism to pluralism. A transformation of the Iraqi state and Iraqi society is impossible without a sustained commitment of soldiers from the United States and other democracies.

Without foreign intervention, the transition in Iraq would have been from Saddam’s bloodstained hands to his psychopathic offspring. Instead, thanks to American leadership, Iraqis have been given an opportunity of peaceful, participatory politics. Contrary to the new conventional wisdom, Iraq and the history of 20th-century Europe demonstrate that force of arms can implant democracy in the most arid soil.

To contain these tensions, and to defend our young democracy, requires the support of American and other troops. Foreign forces are needed to train and equip the new Iraqi armed forces and to give Iraq its own counterterrorism capability. Only the United States and its closest allies are able to provide such assistance.

Creating these Iraqi forces has not been easy, but Iraqis have been undaunted by the difficulties. Every terrorist attack on Iraqi forces leads to a surge in military recruitment–the opposite of the appeasers’ myth that resisting terrorism causes more terrorism.

American forces are in Iraq at the invitation of the democratically elected government of Iraq, and with the backing of a United Nations Security Council resolution. Your soldiers are in my country because of your commitment to democracy.

Americans should be proud of what its soldiers have achieved. The presence of foreign forces has prevented a renewed civil war in Iraq–renewed because there has already been a civil war in Iraq. For 35 years, Saddam and his Baath Party made war on the Iraqi people. The liberation of Iraq ended that civil war.

Without American forces, the vision of American leadership and the quiet fortitude of the American people, Iraqis would be almost alone in the world. With its allies, the United States has provided Iraqis with an unprecedented opportunity. Iraqis have responded by enthusiastically embracing democracy and volunteering to fight for their country. By giving us the tools, your troops help us to defend Iraqi democracy and to finish the job of uprooting Baathist fascism.

Elections matter…. I doubt there would have been a democratically-elected President of Iraq to write this piece if John Kerry had been elected President. He wanted the Jan. 30 election delayed, and US troops to be withdrawn.

Funny, I haven’t heard about this on CBS News. All I know from the MSM is that there is a car bomb in Iraq on days that news coverage of Katrina gets slow. Now, why is that?? I guess it is because they are ‘stuck on stupid.’)

The following is the executive summary from the non-partisan Congressional Research Service detailing the proper Federal Response to a Natural Disaster based on a review of the Federal statute passed in 1988 establishing the process.

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Overview of the Process for a Federal Response to a Natural Disaster

In an effort to provide better understanding of the process, the following document is intended to be a brief overview explaining how the federal government responds to natural disasters.

In 1988, the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act, was enacted to support State and local governments and their citizens when disasters strike. This law establishes a process for requesting and obtaining a Presidential disaster declaration, defines the type and scope of assistance available from the Federal government, and sets the conditions for obtaining that assistance. All incidents are handled at the most immediate organizational and jurisdictional level – local and State agencies are the primary response and recovery units for any disaster. Police, fire, public health and medical, emergency management, and other personnel are responsible for incident management at the local level. The National Guard, State Police, and other responding state agencies are coordinated by the Governor. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is tasked with coordinating the Federal response.